


Someone Will Remember Us, I Say

by motheyes



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar)-centric, Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Air Nomads (Avatar), Airbending & Airbenders, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Gen, Post-Canon, haha aangst, i swear to god all my fics will eventually have that tag on them, someone take my tagging privileges away from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25574542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motheyes/pseuds/motheyes
Summary: The war is over, and the world is healing.The war is over, and Aang sits awake late at night, scribbling frantically into a roll of parchment.(or: aang is the last airbender. he's going to preserve his culture. zuko helps.)
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar), just mentioned - Relationship
Comments: 27
Kudos: 229





	Someone Will Remember Us, I Say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bubbly_Kandy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bubbly_Kandy/gifts).



> this started as a simple conversation with my friend and then it Snowballed.
> 
> i hope you enjoy!! i hope i did the avatar universe justice with this fic.

The war is over, and the world is healing.

The war is over, and Aang sits awake late at night, scribbling frantically into a roll of parchment.

His handwriting is rushed and cramped as he just tries to pen every thought he has. He’ll have time to organize it later; right now, he just needs to write it all down before he forgets.

He’s writing everything he remembers from his childhood, everything he knows about the Air Nomads. Bits of information about architecture are scribbled down next to common idioms and the rules for childhood games. Notes are written in the margins of the margins as Aang goes back and adds new information to old bullet points as he remembers it.

A light tapping noise shakes him out of his thoughts, and he turns to see Katara leaning against the doorframe.

“It’s late,” she says, smiling softly against the flickering candlelight in the room. “Come get some sleep.”

“I can’t yet,” Aang says, well aware that he’s been up the last few nights already, well aware that he woke up this morning facedown on his desk, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “I have to get everything down as soon as I can. I’m the only one who knows any of this, Katara.” 

Katara walks across the room, footsteps soft and light, and she wraps her arms around him from behind the chair and settles her chin on top of his tattooed head.

“I know,” she tells him, and her warm weight really does make it tempting to come to sleep. “It can wait one more day, though. You need to take care of yourself.”

Aang sighs, looking down at the nearly-illegible parchment in front of him, and he says, “I guess.” He puts the quill in his hand down, and with a frustrated noise, he continues, saying, “This would be so much easier with more resources.”

“You can figure that out in the morning,” Katara pushes, albeit gently, and Aang finally gets up.

He follows Katara back to their shared bedroom, but he lies awake for a long time thinking of history before he finally falls asleep.

The next day is, just as the days before it were, filled with politics and drudgery. Aang and Katara are visiting the Fire Nation briefly to help Zuko slog through a lot of the initial work that comes with ending a hundred-year-long war.

He’s in the middle of trying to read a headache-inducing legal form when an idea hits, and he nearly jumps out of his seat in excitement.

“What are you doing,” a dry voice asks, and Aang turns to face Zuko, who’s sitting across the room from him. Before he knows it, he’s spewing all the thoughts he has about his self-given mission out of his mouth.

“I’ve been trying to write down everything I know about the Air Nomads, because, well, I’m the last reliable source there is, and  _ somebody’s  _ got to preserve history. But, and I just realized this, you would be the perfect person to help me!”

Zuko blinks, and Aang barrels on.

“Having someone to help would make things a lot easier,” Aang explains to Zuko, brightly. “And you have access to the royal library. I figured we could go digging through there to see if there’s anything left we can use!”

And so, that night, instead of sitting alone in a dark study, Aang accompanies Zuko to one of the palace’s several libraries.

“Woah,” is what he says when he first steps into the room. Well, room is a loose word; “hall” would be a better word to describe it. The room is tiered, bookshelves stretching along the walls of both levels. Standalone bookshelves sit in rows on the floor as well, too tall for Aang to see over, even on his tiptoes. 

It’s a massive, massive space, filled head to toe with knowledge and literature, rivaling even Wan Shi Tong’s library. Aang finds it hard to believe that this one exists, let alone that there are two other libraries of this scale in the same palace.

As Aang stands still in the doorway, gaping up at the tall ceiling, Zuko pushes past him and starts walking with a purpose towards a section towards the back. Aang jumps to catch up to his long strides.

“If we have anything, it’ll probably be back here,” Zuko muses almost to himself as he skims through endless books. They’re written in the Fire Nation’s language, and so it takes Aang a beat longer to translate the titles written across the spines in his head. He catches a couple that say something about the Water Tribes, and another couple about the Earth Kingdom, and then Zuko lets out a “Ha!” as he pulls a thick book from a higher shelf than Aang can reach.

He tries to blow the dust off its cover, and when that’s only half-effective, he resorts to brushing at it with his sleeve. Finally, though, the thick, thick layer of dust gives way, and Zuko holds it up to Aang to reveal the book’s title:  _ A History of the Western Air Temple _ .

Together, they find a place to sit that’s just as dusty as the book was. 

“Nobody’s been in here in years,” Zuko offers as way of explanation.

The dust coating the rickety old chairs and table meet the same fate as the dust coating the book did; it’s sacrificed to Zuko’s relentless sleeve. That done, he and Aang sit, and they crack the book open in what must be the first time in decades.

Aang finds himself growing excited. This is the first book he’s seen from  _ any _ nation that might have any information about the Air Nomads, the first outside source of information he’s seen since waking up from the iceberg. He leans in and starts to read, Zuko peering over his shoulder.

That excitement is punched in the gut when he manages to slowly read just a few sentences. Those lines of text spit out the same misinformation he’d had the misfortune of hearing, back in the Fire Nation school he’d attended briefly; they speak of a history of violence and savagery that Aang  _ knows _ is incorrect.

Judging by Zuko’s sharp intake of breath, Aang knows he’s seen the same thing.

Aang snatches the book off the table, frantically flipping through the pages to try and find something,  _ anything _ , that he knows is truth. He doesn’t find what he’s looking for, of course, just  _ violence war fighting they deserved to be put down _ , and he’s on the verge of tears when someone gently tugs the book out of his hands.

He looks up to see Zuko burning the thing.

The other boy looks at him over the fire clutched in his palm, and says, “Well.”

Aang sniffles. Zuko looks back down at the burning propaganda.

“Let’s try something else,” Zuko continues.

“Thanks,” Aang tells him, when the book’s nothing but ash and the few tears that escaped Aang’s eyes are evaporated, and Zuko mumbles out a “no problem”.

They don’t try either of the other libraries together. Zuko promises to go through them on his own and get rid of any more propaganda, but he solemnly and quietly tells Aang that he doesn’t think that any positive portrayals of the other three nations escaped Sozin’s rule.

Aang takes the rest of the night to himself, and he spends it going over what he’s already written, trying to visit some memories from childhood that bring as little melancholy as possible. For the first time in the past week, he comes to bed before Katara even intervenes.

As he stares up at the bedroom ceiling, he tries not to think of a man so desperate to gain and maintain power that he was willing to alter the truth. He tries not to think of years of propaganda drilled into the heads of schoolchildren. He tries not to think of a nation forced to be so complicit in its own erasure that it outlawed even the tiniest forms of self expression.

The little sleep he does get is restless, but it’s something.

The next night, they try a different approach. Zuko asks questions, and Aang rambles on and on as Zuko transcribes his answers. He often finds himself off topic, somehow getting from folktales to Aang’s favorite food, but somehow, they’re more productive together than Aang was on his own. If he’s unfocused with clear direction from Zuko, he was all over the place when he was left to his own devices with nothing but a pen and paper.

On top of that, Zuko has the good idea to use different pieces of parchment for different topics, hopefully cutting down on the same type of relentless clutter Aang had been plagued with.

(Zuko’s handwriting is also  _ much _ nicer than Aang’s was, but that’s more of a side benefit to the whole thing.)

Tonight, when Katara stops by, she must see how deep the two of them have gotten into it, because she just stands in the doorway for a few minutes before leaving on her own. Without her, they stay up  _ far _ too late, as when Aang stands to stretch his legs, he realizes they’ve been sitting there long enough that the candles he was using have almost run down entirely.

He also realizes that he’s hungry. He says as much to Zuko, who looks pensive for a moment, before saying that the cooks might let them into the kitchen for a late-night snack.

“Of course they’ll let us in,” Aang says, laughing. “You’re the Fire Lord.”

Zuko pauses for a moment, before saying, “I suppose I am.”

He still asks for permission from the few staff that are in the kitchens this late. Aang doesn’t fault him; he knows how weird it is to be someone people listen to unquestioningly. The staff say yes, of course, though Aang suspects that they’d probably say yes even if Zuko didn’t outrank them.

Nonetheless, they find themselves standing before a series of ovens and countertops and sinks. Looking at all this, particularly the brick ovens standing against one wall of the room, Aang is hit with another idea; it’s his second in as many days. He’s determined to make this one a good one, though.

Zuko asks, “What are you doing?” when he sees Aang rifling through cabinets and pantries, looking for baking supplies.

“Just wait and see,” Aang replies with a grin thrown over his shoulder. Zuko shrugs and sits at a counter, watching Aang as he putters around the kitchen with a purpose.

Just as Monk Gyasto taught him, once upon a time, Aang mixes and rolls out a pie crust from flour and salt and butter, before carefully pressing it into a glass pan he scrounged up from an overhead cabinet.

That goes in the brick oven, which is lit at Aang’s prompting by a bemused Zuko. As he carefully measures out and mixes the ingredients he needs for the rest of the pie and the topping, he chatters away about anything that comes to mind, from the way to care for a sky bison to the average diet of a flying lemur. He sees Zuko pull out a spare set of writing equipment out of the corner of his eye.

Just as he’s done mixing the pie filling (it’s going to be a blueberry pie), Aang checks in on the crusts. He firebends to avoid getting burnt as he pulls the glass tin out of the brick oven with his bare hands. With some pretty perfect timing, it’s just the right level of crispiness, and so Aang slides it onto the counter and carefully pours the filling into the tin as well. The pies go back in the oven.

As it bakes, Aang sits down next to Zuko, and the pair of them chat more. Well, it’s mostly Aang chatting as Zuko listens and hums and nods and jots down the occasional useful fact Aang spits out among the rest of it, but Aang thinks that Zuko’s enjoying it nonetheless.

About twenty minutes later, the pie is pulled and is set on the counter, and Aang uses airbending to almost immediately cool it to room temperature.

“I’d never do this usually,” he explains as he does so. “It’s better to let it cool on its own. We’re in a bit of a time crunch to eat this, though, so I figured it was better to do it faster.”

When it’s cool (tested, of course, by Aang laying his (clean!!) palm on the center of the thing), Aang spreads the whipped topping he made over its center. With that, it’s finally finished, and he places it on the counter cheerfully, sliding back into his seat.

He hands Zuko a fork as he stuffs a big chunk into his own mouth.

“It’s not as good as the ones Monk Gyasto used to make,” he admits after he swallows the first big bite he took. He grins at Zuko anyway. “Still pretty good though!”

Zuko hums in agreement, already on his third or fourth forkful.

“These are traditional desserts, in case you hadn’t already figured that out,” Aang continues. “We eat- ate a lot of fruit. I mean, that’s obvious, because of the whole vegetarian thing, but we ate more fruit-based food than vegetables. They were easier to find naturally at higher altitudes, so we had to import less of them.”

Zuko, at this point, has already finished his part of the pie, leaving the rest of it cut in a very neat half. He sets his fork down and gets back to writing.

“Were sweet foods very common?” he asks, which prompts Aang into a whole other spiel.

“They were,” he muses between bites of pie, “but usually we would rely on natural sweetness from berries or other fruit. Sugar was hard to come by, you know? Had to get it imported like a lot of our other food, and sugar especially was a luxury.”

Zuko’s eye lights up, and Aang gets the feeling that he’s stumbled into a topic Zuko already knows a lot about.

“How much would you say was imported per year? Where from? When compared to-”

Aang cuts off his spiel with a wide-eyed look. “I’m sorry, man, but I was like eleven at the time. I didn’t know a lot about economics. Still don’t to be honest.”

Both of them are quiet for a moment. Hanging between them in the silent air is a question they may never have the answer to.

For the first time that night, they truly feel the loss of a whole nation, a whole culture, lost to war and greed. One airbender may have survived, may remember some of what was lost, but there are gaps in human knowledge, a limit to how much any one person can know.

There are scrolls and books and irreplaceable bits of culture that were burned by the Fire Nation a hundred years ago, and for what? For the sake of making a peaceful group of nomads seem more threatening? For the sake of a war that benefited nobody but a select power-hungry few?

Aang pushes the last bits of his pie around the bottom of the tin, his appetite gone.

“I think I’m going to go to sleep,” he says. Zuko doesn’t argue.

They meet again the night after that, though the tone is considerably more subdued. In a desperate bid to cheer himself up, Aang decides to talk about the sky bison.

“They’re the first airbenders,” he starts, tilting his head back to rest on the back of his chair so he can look at the ceiling. “They have five stomachs and six legs, of course. They’re vegetarians, like the Nomads.”

Zuko cuts off his aimless ramble, sooner rather than later this time, with a question. “I know you have a close bond with Appa…?”

“A sky bison is a companion for life,” Aang says, his face lighting up as it does whenever he thinks about Appa. “You choose a bison when you’re old enough, and it’s your best friend for the rest of both of your lives. An airbender and their bison are given the same funeral rites.”

It’s here that his face drops as he’s hit with a horrifying realization.

“The monks and their bison were never given a proper funeral,” he whispers.

The scratching of Zuko’s quill stops as Aang’s eyes fill with tears.

“They died and nobody was there to honor them after death.”

Aang sits in quiet grief. Tears do actually fall, this time, hot and wet down the sides of his face. The ceiling, which he’s still staring at, blurs through the water.

After a very, very quiet minute, Zuko speaks up.

“Maybe not, but we can remember them correctly.” Zuko peers up at Aang. “We can stop the spread of the propaganda. I was already planning on major changes to the standard Fire Nation curriculum, and all this is invaluable help.” He briefly waves the stack of scrolls that he and Aang have spent the last week filling in the air. “We can’t bring them back, but we can remember their names.”   
  
That nearly makes Aang cry for a different reason.

“I’m sorry,” he sniffs, running the palm of his hand over his eyes. 

Gently, as though he’s afraid of breaking him, Zuko pats his back.

“It’s alright,” he says, and it’s stunted and awkward but Aang knows he means it.

The damage can never really be undone, but it can be remembered; there are no victors, not in this war, not in  _ any _ war, but history can be written by the countless victims so that the same mistakes are  _ never _ made again.

The war is over, and the world is healing, and two boys heal in tandem with it.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for taking the time to read!!! if you enjoyed it, kudoses and comments mean a lot to me, more than i can express.
> 
> i have a couple other fics in progress for this fandom. the first of those should hopefully be up in a few days.
> 
> thank you again, and i hope you have a wonderful day <3


End file.
